Sept. 11, 2013: A Muslim poem but no Pledge of Allegiance at Boston-area high school

On Wednesday, the 12th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the principal at Concord-Carlisle High School in the suburbs of Boston read a Muslim poem to the entire school instead of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Principal Peter Badalament has since apologized for the oversight, reports the Boston Herald. According to school district spokesman Tom Lucey, Badalament had lined up a student to recite the Pledge on the morning of Sept. 11. However, that student turned out to be busy with an internship.

“We had the well-being of students at the forefront of our thinking when we chose to acknowledge 9/11 by reading a poem that focused on cross-cultural understanding rather than unsettling words and images associated with the event,” the principal’s apology explained. Badalament also acknowledged “all those who died and suffered loss on 9/11″ and “those who have served and continue to serve our country.”

Badalament managed to fail to schedule anyone else to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He was also apparently incapable of reciting the short expression of patriotism himself on the anniversary of coordinated al-Qaeda terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people on American soil.

The recitation of the Muslim poem occurred later in the day, not at the same time the Pledge had been scheduled, Lucey added.

A local school board member has now stepped up to defend Badalament from the philistines who have criticized his decision.

“I’m disappointed at the reaction of some of my community,” Concord-Carlisle School Committee member Philip Benincasa told the Herald. “I think what the principal was doing was an attempt to offer young people a glimpse of what binds us together as people. This was an attack carried out by extremists, not by a religious group that is as peace-loving and valued member of our community, our culture and our world as any other.”

The poem by Syrian-American poet Mohja Kahf is called “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears.” It details the cultural collision that occurs when the author’s Muslim grandmother attempts to wash her feet in a bathroom at a Midwestern department store in observance of “wudu,” a pre- prayer ritual for Muslims.

The poem does not rhyme and has no recognizable metrical form. The word “American” makes three appearances in the work — two of them sarcastic observations by the narrator and the third a contemptuous reference to U.S. citizens by a character in the poem.